NUMBER OF U.S. COLLEGE STUDENTS FROM AFRICA DWINDLING

STANFORD -- Each spring, the Stanford African Students Association puts on
Africa Week, a lively series of programs ranging from panel discussions and
films to parties ringing with African music, dance and cuisine.

Yet behind the festivities lies a troubling irony: At a time when Stanford
and other American universities are seeing record enrollments of students
from around the world, the number of students able to come to America from
Africa is dwindling.

Last year, the Institute for International Education reported that just
5.2 percent (21,890) of all international students in the United States were
from Africa, the lowest percentage in 30 years.

At Stanford alone, the number of recorded students from sub-Saharan Africa
dropped from a high of 60 in 1985-86 to 28 this year, or 1 percent of the
university's total international student population of 2,373. For comparison,
the number of Stanford students this year from Japan alone is 194.

"Primarily, the drop in African students is a factor of worsening economic
conditions," said John Pearson, director of Stanford's Bechtel International
Center, who compiles the statistics each year. "There is a severe lack of
funding for African students to study abroad."

Agrees Kwaku Osafo-Mensah, a Stanford medical student from Ghana: "It used
to be the case that African students could get funding for their education
overseas. Now they have to fend for themselves."

Students from newly independent African nations first began coming to the
United States in significant numbers during the 1960s. By 1985, after the
OPEC oil boom, oil-rich Nigeria was the third highest country of origin for
international students in the United States. Five years later, with oil
prices plummeting, it had disappeared from the top 10.

"The trends in the 1980s were clearly related to Africa's deep economic
crisis," said David Abernethy, a Stanford political scientist specializing in
African affairs who has worked in Nigeria and Tanzania.

"African governments used to pay the bills for their students overseas,
but they don't have the capacity to do that anymore. Most countries there are
very deeply in debt, and the debt as a proportion of their exports is much
higher in African countries than elsewhere. They're extremely poor, their
economies are contracting, and still they're expected to pay back their
debtors."

Compounding the problem, he said, is the lack of a prosperous middle class
in most African countries.

"With the exception of Nigeria, Africa does not have a large number of
middle-class parents with the money to send their own children overseas,"
Abernethy said. "I would guess, for example, that far fewer Indian students
are on government scholarships than Africans, because of the relatively large
Indian middle class."

African students also are finding it harder to obtain funding from outside
agencies, according to Stanford history Professor Richard Roberts, director
of the Joint Stanford-Berkeley Center for African Studies.

"There was a time when African students received significant support from
places like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation," he said.
"That has dried up as these foundations have shifted their efforts toward
international issues like the environment and international security."

Indeed, many funding agencies are rethinking the idea of supporting
overseas education for African students altogether.

"There are some strong arguments for African countries to rely more on
locally trained talent," Abernethy said.

"One of the problems with a technical degree from the United States is
that it is built upon a whole infrastructure that includes access to
computers, laboratories and capital. Oftentimes the technical training
generates skills that are simply not possible for the African student to
apply at home."

A possible long-term approach is for American universities to help African
countries improve their own university systems, though book shipments,
research cooperation and exchange programs.

In the late 1980s, the Stanford South African Schools Project sent several
boxes of used textbooks to South African secondary schools, and further
shipments to African universities are being discussed, according to
Abernethy.

In addition, the Joint Stanford-Berkeley Center for African Studies is
using a grant from the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences to send an
advanced doctoral student to teach at South Africa's University of the
Western Cape. Seven graduate students from five departments have applied for
this position.

Such help is more than welcome, according to Nigerian political scientist
Michael Maduagwu, a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution.

"In terms of facilities, Nigerian universities are really in a sorry
state," he said. "Our libraries are essentially empty; there are virtually no
current journals. It's a very terrible state of affairs. If every American
university could adopt a university in Nigeria, it would make a world of
difference."

African students have contributed greatly over the years to the
international atmosphere at Stanford, working closely with African studies
scholars and organizing the university's Africa Week each spring.

In recent years, the student body has included a handful of black South
African undergraduates, recruited through the Independent Schools South
Africa Education Program. Among those graduating last June was microbiology
student Omphemetse Mooki, a 1992 Rhodes Scholar.

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